NGCP fast-tracks Bohol transmission backbone

System operator National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) is keeping up with the targeted completion this year of the P1.19- billion Bohol transmission backbone so it could support the briskly growing economic activities in the area.

The 138-kilovolt Ubay-Corella transmission project, also integrates the upgrade of the Ubay substation. Expected energization of the facilities will be last quarter of 2013.

The grid operator explained that “the construction of the Ubay-Corella line will prevent the overloading of the two 69-kV lines in Bohol,” in reference to the Ubay-Trinidad and Ubay-Alicia lines.

Such overloading incident could happen, the company expounded, “when one of the segments experiences an outage.”

The stretch of the new transmission line will be 95 kilometers and spans from “the northeast to the southwest areas of the island.”

A linked component to the project is the construction of the Corella substation, which will house the transformer of 100-megavolt ampere (MVA) capacity, the 138-kV power circuit breaker and accessories.

The substation facility which will be sited in Tagbilaran City, NGCP said, “will serve as an alternative drawdown substation of the Ubay substation” and is intended to reduce the substation’s load via this new power delivery point.

Beyond economic expansion in the area, the completion of the transmission backbone will also give NGCP another compliance milestone to the N-1 contingency that it has been mandated to achieve under the Philippine Grid Code.

Construction of the inter-related facilities commenced in 2010 and had been set as component of the company’s capital expenditure allocation under its prevailing regulatory reset under performance-based regulation.

NGCP is still continually implementing projects which will bring most of the grid components to N-1 performance level.

Under its concession agreement with government, NGCP will have to expand and modernize the grid by funneling much-needed investments, which the State would not have been able to afford due to its dire fiscal condition.